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Want To Work For a Cool Tech Company? Hone Your Social Skills
jfruh writes Big companies like Google may need to fill seats with high-skilled workers, but smaller companies — which often fit the profile of the hip workplaces people dream of — still have the luxury of picking and choosing. That's why applicants' social skills and "cultural fit" are so important, which may shatter your dreams of tech as a clique-free meritocracy.
I like people well enough, but I'm a Morlock, not an Eloi. I want to get things done, not gab with your about the brats you spawned to replace yourself.
to get rid of you.
but if you are valuable enough, then they will overlook issues.
Want to work for a startup which is guaranteed to fail? Go look for employers who care more about having fun than getting shit done.
Don't like working with nerds and introverts? Then your tech business will fail.
Rich white frat boy "tech founders" like being around other rich white frat boys. Anyone that says otherwise, has never set foot in present day San Francisco.
Want to work in a decent, non-dead-end job, with the opportunity to advance your career and make a meaningful difference to the world? Learn to interact with people. Learn empathy, learn communications skills, learn to temper your urge towards condescension and dismissal. If you're a coder, it's 50% of your job, assuming you're doing your job right.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Don't you know? Only rich white frat boy social skills count as social skills.
Meritocracy:
1. government or the holding of power by people selected on the basis of their ability.
2. a ruling or influential class of educated or skilled people.
"skills" or "ability" don't just mean "technical skills," or "technical ability."
Personally, I find that in many tiny companies you actually see the opposite of "social skills" -- they become so deeply, desperately, dependent on the particular technical genius of one or two people that those people can basically do everything and anything they want to do, because the company doesn't think it could survive without them. I've worked in small startups where one of the three principal engineers was allowed to sexually harass an ex-girlfriend; in the same place, another principal engineer was such an asshole people basically routed around him. And the third one? He was a a perfectly pleasant guy I loved working with.
Getting things done, in most environments, includes working with other people. I'm a big fan of the "no brilliant jerks" rule. See "The No Asshole Rule" book for more discussion of this.
>your dreams of tech as a clique-free meritocracy
How is a meritocracy not just another type of clique?
How is hiring people for their excellent social skills not a meritocracy?
There are so many implicit values embedded in the statement that it becomes a declaration of an extremely specific type of workplace the submitter (or editor) wants and thinks everyone else should want as well. It's the equivalent of the guy without a knife asserting that the guy with the knife should drop it and fight like a man.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Thanks, I'm good.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nah, you can be /somewhat/ introverted and still do well. But the fact of the matter is that social skills *are* crucial. It's not discriminatory, it's business, and a person who can't communicate well, who can't interact well, is a net negative, no matter how awesome a coder they are. It's not fair to the business and it's not fair to the rest of the team to have to "deal" with the guy or gal who just can't mesh with the team.
I've wasted so much time dealing with prima donnas and socially inept "geniuses" that I don't hire either these days. The very first interview is always a personality interview, and if I struggle seeing the person fitting in with the rest of the team, I don't even bother moving on to a technical/skills phase of the interview.
That doesn't mean we don't hire people that just geek out on tech, but they are people who are passionate but also kind of laid back, people with a good sense of humor, people who can express themselves clearly and can communicate well, people who don't get offended when someone disagrees with them, people just cocky enough to take some risks but who aren't arrogant - they have individual humility while still being very bullish on what they can do to help the team.
If a candidate doesn't have these qualities, then I genuinely don't care if they are the greatest developer in the history of the world - without the right personality type, they are just too much of a hassle and I pass on them and let them be some other company's problem.
The reality of it is that there are more qualified IT professionals than there are jobs available. Competition is very stiff for many system admin and engineering jobs. System admins are overworked and under-appreciated: they are treated as very disposable. Screw that! I tell most folks to stay out of IT.
"Cool"? No. Nerds often want to work for an interesting and technically challenging start-up, NOT a "cool" start-up. Craig Newmark's approach is more to my style than say Twitter.
It's unhip, bland, outdated, but will probably outlast other sites, seeing how the herd transition from MySpace to FaceBook to Twitter to BorgFace (or whatever comes next) steps on the prior one. Craigslist is like Latin: it can't go out of style because it was never in style (in the post-Columbus era, at least). He has mooned and outlasted "cool".
Few accuse Craig of being "cool", except maybe in an eastern meditative libertarian nerd kind of way.
Table-ized A.I.
Dude... If you truly believe that tripe, you have some serious issues.
Contribution to the Steam Age AND to a greater extent the Information Age has been pretty much independent of one's specific plumbing as determined by the number of X and Y chromosomes you have. Where there has traditionally been male and female dominated careers, the contribution of both has not been one sided. I'd be careful claiming "male genius" as something better than the female kind because it is not.
Full disclosure... I'm a happily married white man with kids...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Since I was born with speech and hearing impediments. However, I can socialize online decently (like this /. post) but many people don't like those. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Get picked off the street and made a certified nuclear reactor operator in 18 months. They will do all of the training required, you just need to be serious in your studies. Especially when you haven't clue one on the subject :}
I do qualify it as a tech job, I could write much to back that up but it'd be just be a lot of junk you wouldn't wish to read.
Just saying fate works in odd ways. I was unemployed for close to two years prior.
You are disposable. There will always be another one just like you that they can hire. They can get a dozen resumes with a single call.
Only if citizens are not given their proper prioritization above non-citizens.
That's if they don't just get someone on a H1B visa.
That's an even bigger problem since it presumes that a US citizen is never competent enough.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Unfortunately, disparate impact can change that statement.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
#gamergate. AMIRITE?!?!
*sigh* I wasn't. Read the article, then the parent subject line. I was saying that the more general issue is finding people who can be the right fit for a team, regardless of their skill level.
So that disqualifies various sets of people - those who are so extremely introverted that they can't interact with the rest of the team very well, those who are poor communicators, those who are prima donnas, and those who have poor reading comprehension.
Want To Work For a Cool Tech Company? Hone Your Social Skills
I think you meant "hone your social skills please."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Social skills and teamwork ability are great things to have, but when these words are used in relation to a job, they invariably mean submitting to existing hierarchies. If I refuse to be a paid slave that doesn't make me an antisocial egotist.
Right. Worked at these places and worked for bland corporate offices. After a while, the idea of working an 8 hour day and going home to relax appeals a lot more than a pool table.
Really what I want is a staff canteen, and an HR department that will respond to complaints of overwork. Going out with colleagues for beers once in a while is nice and so is interesting work but that should be as well as rather than instead of a healthy work-life balance.
It's exactly the other way around.
Want experienced pros who can rescue your projects from total disaster?
Treat them like humans.
It's the companies that need to hone their social skills. End of Story.
Point in case: I am - once again - in a gig with an agency. They took some effort to convince me to give them a try. We did 2 months of contracting to try things out, then I came on. ... any marketing buzzword you can think of - you're b-bingo cards would be filled many times over in one regular workday. We even have a whole department specialized in producing power-point presentations (No joke!). The naivety with which technical issues are approached here leaves me gasping for air every odd week. It takes effort to remain calm, explaining even the most basic concepts of web-development to people who do and sell web to our customers 24/7. Our headroom is a bunch of outlet multipliers from the hardware store and a bunch of off-the-shelf home-SAN-drives piled into one heap for company backup purposes, managed by a student on the side. A truly scary sight. The only host that come close to anything a pro would use I salvaged from a ancient Acer laptop lying around that I cleaned and installed Debian 7.6 on. Our production pipeline is a sight to make a grown man cry.
"Change Management" "Corporate Publishing"
However, and here is where it gets interesting:
I've rarely worked with such kind, forthcoming and polite people. The respect that I'm treated with and the patience with which the team treats me when I can barely hold back my techie-frustration I've rarely seen. I've seen so many asshole agencies in my life that I'm still genuinely suprised how this shop completely breaks the mold in my book. It's a team that lacks the in-house experience and actually is aware of the fact. Aside from that, they are a refreshing experience after years of too much crap.
I've seen so many shops in which devs are treated like shit - that they themselves have lost their social skills or have no interest in using them, is of no surprise to me.
I've come to the conclusion, that I'd rather work with the sort of company I am in now that with some so-called dedicated web-development team that can't treat their members like normal people.
Bottom line:
That social skill thing works both ways. I've taken such amounts of crap from corps and companies in this industry that I find conclusions like those of the GP laughable at best. In most cases their just plain wrong.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Oh, it's not on a whim at all. It's the realization that the degree to which a person can work well with, communicate with, interact with, etc. (basically, "fit in with") others is massively important, so much so that if a person is too lacking in those areas then it's better for your team and for your business to not hire them, no matter how good they look on paper.
Gotta ask: why? Are you not capable of getting paid more than $20/hr elsewhere? Or did you just want the extra hours/income? If any employer ever asked me to work more than 50 hr/week for more than 2 weeks in a row I'd probably take my ball and go home.
One reason companies offer all the silly perks (pool table, excessive free food, etc.): it's a way to compensate employees tax-free. I can pay my guys $1000 more apiece but they'll only take home $700. Maybe $1000 worth of "free perks" and creating the perception of a "fun culture" offers better "bang for my buck" in terms of attracting and retaining employees than the extra $700 in take-home pay. Then again, maybe not. But I'm willing to entertain the argument that it does.
The ability to wear longs sleeves with shorts is a social skill?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
There are so many candidates that have such an obvious lack of any technical skill or talent, that companies really can't turn away people that are actually able to do the work. Perhaps this is part of the perception that there is some sort of "shortage". They want an ideal perfect fit but that simply doesn't exist.
If I could "do it all" I would not let someone else exploit my labor. I would work for myself and keep most of the value of my skill for myself instead of letting someone else take it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I turn away people who are qualified (in terms of technical skill) but don't pass the personality test *all the time*.
In the past month alone I've passed on 2 candidates who were very technically competent, but one could barely carry on a conversation and the other was obnoxiously arrogant and smug.
OTOH in the past 4-5 months I've hired about a dozen developers who have a variety of skill levels but are just great to be around and to work with - they have a good work-life balance, they aren't easily offended, they're personable and team-oriented.
It's not at all about finding a "perfect" fit but is about weighing all factors that matter, and things like communicating, being personable, and other social skills are *crucial* to success. Of course it doesn't mean you hire people that are fun to be around but are lousy developers, but it also doesn't mean that you jeopardize the team and/or the business by bringing on someone you have to constantly "deal with" in some way or another. Everyone has their quirks and off days, I'm not talking about that, but people that have to be coddled or who are hyper-sensitive or contentious or can't articulate thoughts or have a normal discussion - it's nearly impossible for really good technical skill to outweigh those kinds of drawbacks.
And for the record, while I agree that there are oodles of crummy candidates out there, I'm also skeptical there is some sort of widespread shortage - we don't seem to have trouble finding candidates that range from "very good" to "superstar" and everything in between.
Hiring is necessarily discriminatory. Is there a point here?
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
fuck you, i have awesome social skills and i'll break the face of anyone who says otherwise!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you are not the social type they are looking for then they are not looking for you and you dio not want that job.
Perhaps you can lie and fake your social skills (or anything else), but at some moment they either notice you are a liar or you become extremely unhappy playing something you are not.
In the end you do not really know what they are looking for.
It could very well be that you have a serious lack of social skills. Working on that will help. Not to get a job, but to get a better life. (if you have problems with it)
But do not lie. The moment they know you lied, you are done. I have terminated interviews the moment I noticed they were lying. One I remember was a person who lied about a skill we did not ask about nor needed. My reasoning: if he lies about this, he will be dishonest about other things as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'm not just somewhat introverted. I'm seriously introverted, and if they'd had the Autism Spectrum Disorder stuff when I was in school I probably would have been diagnosed.
I set out to learn how to behave socially. It didn't come naturally to me, so I read stuff and observed and managed to get by. I don't do well at parties with lots of strangers, but I can usually avoid such and socialize with friends. Having a sense of humor really helped.
Early in my career, my manager told me that I was technically superb, but needed to communicate better, so I worked on that. That was the last time I heard that particular complaint. I found a way not to be intimidated by audiences, sort of seeing them as an audience rather than as lots of people. Worked for me.
Communication is vital in almost any job. It's a skill you need. My job depends on being a C++ whiz, but also being competent with English and communication. I've worked hard on both my C++ and my English, and it's paid off. I'm not a manager and never will be, and I'm fine with that. I'm doing a job I like and making enough money for a very nice lifestyle.
I think one key thing here is humility. I don't know everything, and fitting into the world on my terms works better than any alternative I've seen. Rather than figuring that the things I didn't do well on were unimportant, I considered them individually and worked on the ones I thought important.
One reason this worked is that I'm pretty intelligent. I can figure out how to learn things, and then learn them.
You could call my childhood issues some sort of handicap if you like, but it's what I am. I have had a successful life (wife and son I love, social life suited for me, job I like, enough money) while still being me.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This post is excellent. You captured what I was trying to say and expressed it much better than I did, thank you!
That's fine, but then you have zero right to complain about a tech labor "shortage". If there's a shortage, then you should be hiring anyone who's qualified, no matter how bad their interpersonal skills are. It's your job as management to help them succeed as part of the team, and if you can't do that, then you are incompetent.
If you want to take the easy route and only hire people who are easy to manage, that's your prerogative, but you can't complain about any kind of shortage if you do this.
Please read my other posts - not only did I not complain about a shortage, I went so far as to say that I don't really think there is a shortage.
Regardless, I think you're missing my point: my position is that some people, no matter how good their skills are, are a *net negative*, because tech skills are only a part of the equation (an equation that includes things like interpersonal skills), and that people/teams/companies that don't properly weigh that part of the equation end up paying the price for a long time to come and end being worse off than had they not hired that person. So, no, it's not a good idea to hire people just on the basis of technical qualifications.
Put another way, if someone is applying for a dev job at my company and they have really poor interpersonal skills, I'd argue they aren't qualified for the job. They're at best partially qualified, so we don't hire them.
And it's not the "easy route", not by a long shot. It's actually harder, especially up front, but you do it because you know it's better in the long run.
But is it putting an emphasis on people who are easy to manage? Absolutely. Anything else is insanity. I run a business, not some volunteer organization where you work with whatever you've got.
Please read my other posts - not only did I not complain about a shortage, I went so far as to say that I don't really think there is a shortage.
Sorry, I was only responding to your one post, and assuming that like so many other managers that you might buy into the whole tech-worker shortage idea.
Regardless, I think you're missing my point: my position is that some people, no matter how good their skills are, are a *net negative*,
I agree, at least the way modern companies do their management. I think it's entirely possible to get such people to be productive assets to the company, but almost no companies want to bother actually developing the people-management skills necessary to do so. It can't be done the way companies currently manage employees, and would probably require hiring a bunch of psychologists and developing the appropriate management methods, instead of what companies do now, which is basically take technically-skilled people, and simply promote them into management without any regard for actual skill at dealing with people.
But is it putting an emphasis on people who are easy to manage? Absolutely. Anything else is insanity. I run a business, not some volunteer organization where you work with whatever you've got.
Well it just depends on how much you want to invest in people, and how much you think you'll get out of them with that investment. With some brilliant people who are really, really hard to manage (requiring developing all-new management skills as I outlined above), you'll have to invest a lot of time and money and energy, but who knows, maybe you'll get some really brilliant new products that make your company a fortune. Of course, that's a big gamble. Maybe you'll get less out than other companies that take a safe route, or worse maybe your reinvented-management initiative will be a giant failure. But so many companies keep repeating this "tech worker shortage" mantra, so if there really were such a shortage, they should be doing just as I said, regardless of the risk, because a hard-to-manage employee is better than no employee at all.
Good points. Yeah, I don't know if we've just been really lucky or what, but I haven't seen the tech worker shortage (despite all of the yelling about it).
Thanks for the discussion!